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This Maserati 8CTF single-seat racecar won the Indy 500 in 1939 and 1940. ​

Indianapolis 500, 1939. After a dramatic race, it's an Italian car that captures the victory.Maserati 8CTF, driven by Wilbur Shaw, was the only European car to triumph in Indianapolis for two consecutive times Maserati .

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The one and only Ghia Gilda Streamline coupé originally commissioned by Chrysler in 1955. It was fitted with a normal combustion engine for the shows and then sat in the Henry Ford museum until it purchased by a californian enthusiast who restored it and had it fitted with a gas turbine jet engine finally on the 21st century. This car *could* literally blow your socks off!

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Completed in 1953, in time for the January 1954 Motorama at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the Firebird I holds the distinction of being the first gas turbine car unveiled in the United States (Chrysler’s first turbine-powered car debuted to the public a couple months later, in March 1954). Power came from a GM-designed GT-302 Whirlfire Turbo-Power gas turbine engine, which utilized a two-stage design incorporating both a gasifier section and a power section. Unlike a jet airplane, which uses thrust for propulsion, the Firebird concepts relied upon this thrust to drive a power turbine, which in turn was linked to a transmission that powered the driven rear wheels. Output was rated at an impressive 370 horsepower, once the gasifier turbine spooled to 26,000 RPM and the power turbine was spinning at a more relaxed 13,000 RPM. Like a conventional piston engine, idle speed of the GT-302 engine was considerably lower, but in this case that’s a relative term, as the gasifier turbine still spun at 8,000 RPM.